努斯鮑姆思想中的同情觀發端於斯多葛學派和亞里斯多德，是傳統同情觀在當代被公認的最有貢獻的發展。她認為，同情是借助想像力，為了他人的善並使之成為我們關心對象的情感。同情有三個認知要素：嚴重性的判斷，即是否某人面臨嚴重的情況；不應該受苦的判斷，即這個人是否不應承受這種痛苦；幸福生活的判斷，即相關不幸事件在正常理性判斷下是否影響這個人的幸福生活。她把這種人的幸福生活與她的十種人的可行能力相聯繫，實質就是人的基本權利。由此，她的同情觀，既與斯多葛學派、亞里斯多德不同，也與近代社會和現代社會的同情觀不同。努斯鮑姆思想中的同情觀是當今三條研究同情的思路的提升與發展，既有其優勢也存在其不足。

The view of Martha C. Nussbaum’s compassion, as one of the most important contributions in the emotion study, stems from Stoicism and Aristotle, developing the traditional view of compassion. She argues that compassion is the emotion of making use of imagination to fulfill goodness, regarding the other as the object of care. Compassion includes three cognitive elements, the requirement of level of seriousness, in which pertinent person is in the deep water, the underserved requirement, in which the pertinent person should not be in the deep water, the requirement of good life, in which we should judge if this misfortune thing affect this person’s good life according to the ordinary reason. Here, she associates a person’s good life with the list of ten capabilities that she put up, namely human rights. Her compassion is quite different with Stoicism and Aristotle, or with the view of modern and contemporary society. The view of Martha Nussbaum’s compassion has both strengths and weaknesses in three kinds of considerations of the contemporary study of compassion.